


All Good Renos

by Pigzxo



Category: Stitchers (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 08:50:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4870729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Cameron is the host of an HGTV reno show and Kirsten is the most difficult homeowner he has ever had to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Good Renos

“I just need you to tile this wall for me, cupcake. Can you do that?” Cameron said.

            Kirsten nodded.

            “Great. So grab the spreader—”

            “Oh,” she said.

            He paused. He rested his pursed lips against his clasped hands. Through clenched teeth, he said, “What?”

            She shrugged and gave him what passed for her as an apologetic look. He was already dreading whatever it was that she was going to say.

            “That’s not how you do it.”

            Cameron blinked and held back a sigh. “Okay,” he said, licking his lips. “Okay. Umm, well, you see, I’m a certified contractor. I know what I’m doing. I know things like, oh, I don’t know... how to spread grout on tile. What do you know about that?”

            “I know what I want my house to look like,” she replied. “And I don’t want it to look like it was grouted by an amateur.”

            He stared at her for a long moment and then nodded. “Fine. How do you want to grout the tile?”

            She held out her hand and, after a second, he handed her the bucket of grout. She set it down on the ground, took the spreader, and dipped it into the grout. She was about to touch the spreader to the wall when Cameron said, “Wait. Wait. Wait.”

            Kirsten paused to look up at him. He made a motion for the cameras to start rolling and then squatted down next to her. He watched as she smoothly spread the grout over the tiles, using an odd angle as she tried to get it into all the cracks. Biting his tongue to stop himself from correcting her, he instead calmly recited his lines.

            “Now that you’ve got the grout in—”

            “I don’t,” she said. She glanced towards him, her brown eyes wide. “I have a lot more work to do. I have to—”

            Cameron sighed and cut his hand across his throat. Linus turned off the camera and offered Cameron an apologetic shrug before rewinding the tape. Cameron looked away from him, forced himself to focus on Kirsten, and tried to think of the right words to say. All he knew was that they had been filming for three hours and probably had about thirty seconds of useable footage.

            “Kirsten,” he said slowly. She cocked her head. “Kirsten. Stretch. Look. I know you’re smart. I know you know what you’re doing. But this show is based on me, the contractor, giving you, the homeowner, advice on how to fix their house.”

            “I know how to fix my house.”

            “Then why are you on this show?”

            Kirsten glanced over his head and he turned around to see her roommate, Camille, flirting with Linus. Cameron closed his eyes, biting down on a sigh, and turned back to her. “Fine. You know what you need to do. But would you mind pretending that you can’t? Just for the cameras.”

            “You want me to pretend to be stupid?”

            He held up his hands at the edge in her voice. “No. Never, sparky. Be brilliant and edgy and have your PhD and own it. But just maybe pretend not to know how to use a hammer?”

            She opened her mouth, her lips spreading into a challenging smile, and he realized too late that he’d already made another mistake. Standing, she brushed off her crisp black pants and said, “So you just want me to perpetuate gender stereotypes about how women know nothing about using tools?”

            Cameron pursed his lips and stood. Rubbing his hands together, he once again searched for words he didn’t have. She would stand there all day staring at him –he knew she would– and wouldn’t care one way or another what that did to his filming time. He glanced back over at Linus, but the other man was no longer there to commiserate with him.

            Shaking his head, Cameron said, “No. I want you to perpetuate the stereotype that homeowners need to hire a contractor in order to do any decent work on their house.”

            “Why?”

            “Because otherwise I’m out of a job, sweet pea.”

            She sighed and said, “Fine. Teach me how to grout a wall.”

            He clapped his hands. “There we go!” He turned and yelled, “LINUS!”

***

            They stood side by side in front of a very, very red wall. Cameron screwed up his face, the paint roller still in his hand, making it cumbersome to cross his arms. The cameras were rolling and, for once, Kirsten hadn’t done anything to make them have to turn them off. Painting, at least, was a relatively simple task that required little instruction even with the homeowners who had no idea what they were doing.

            “I hate it,” Kirsten said suddenly.

            Cameron swore.

            Linus turned off the camera.

            “What?” she asked. She looked at Cameron and then gestured to the wall. “That’s what you call interior design? It looks like someone bled all over it.”

            “It’s called an accent wall.”

            “What’s it accent? Camille’s ability to murder me without cleaning up after?”

            “Hey!” Camille interjected. Then she shrugged. “Not a bad idea, actually.”

            Kirsten rolled her eyes. “It’s awful.”

            “Then repaint it after the show is finished,” Cameron replied.

            “We should paint it now.”

            “We should not do that. We have a show to film.”

            She sighed and put down her paint roller. Pulling the elastic from her hair, she said, “Fine. Just don’t put any furniture in front of it.”

            As she walked away, he muttered, “Sure thing, princess.”

***

            Cameron heard one of his men groan from the other room and he winced. Linus hesitated in putting the camera down as Cameron lost the line he was trying to deliver. He looked towards the other room, trying to decide whether or not to go in there, and then met Linus’ eyes.

            “Your show, buddy,” he said.

            “Don’t remind me.”

            Cameron pushed the camera out of his face and made his way out of the half-finished kitchen into the living room. The living room that, by all accounts, was still a disaster zone. The wooden support beams of the walls showed through where the drywall was yet to be patched and two men stood on ladders, working on the wiring in the ceiling.

            Kirsten stood in the middle of the chaos, having a heated argument with Tim. He stared at her impassively, almost as if all of her words were going over his head, and she tried very hard to lie out exact scientific reasons why her method was better.

            Cameron approached slowly, not really wanting to get involved, and touched Kirsten on the elbow. She flinched at the contact and looked at him, her blonde ponytail whipping across her back. She crossed her arms. Tim mimicked the action.

            “What’s going on?” Cameron asked.

            “She’s trying to tell me how to do my job,” Tim said.

            “Only because you clearly don’t know how to do it,” Kirsten replied.

            “Whoa, okay.” Cameron stepped between the two of them. He smiled at Tim and said, “I’ll deal with this, okay?”

            Tim nodded.

            Cameron let his hand come down on Kirsten’s shoulder and steered her out of the living room. They walked past the supposedly horrendous red wall and into a narrow hallway. Cameron turned to Kirsten, developing the speech in his head, and met her big brown eyes. Fire flashed through them, just daring him to say the wrong thing again.

            “Kirsten,” he began. “We’re taping a show here. Do you get that?”

            “I live here,” she said. “Do you get that?”

            He swallowed a nervous laugh. “Look, buttercup—” He shifted them to the side as two men came through carrying a wooden beam. “We’re on a deadline here and—” He swallowed his words as three more men walked by holding a marble countertop. With a sigh, Cameron moved Kirsten backward and stepped into the hall closet. He shut the doors behind them.

            Turning, he was momentarily speechless at the way she looked at him. Like she wanted nothing better than to pull his intestines out through his throat. Her arms were still firmly crossed over her chest and the tilt of her head held a challenge, not even warranting the way she raised her eyebrows. He swallowed.

            “We’re on a deadline,” he started again. “This episode has to be taped in the next week or we’re screwed. Now, the house can be done by then, I have no doubt about that. What I do have doubts about is how much footage we can feasibly use when all you do is second-guess our choices and try to tell my people how to do their jobs.”

            “It’s my house.”

            “Are you a contractor though? Do you have any formal training in how to renovate a house?”

            She rolled her eyes.

            “Hey, no,” he said. He grabbed her arm. “Don’t roll your eyes at me. This is serious business.”

            “Yeah, really serious. It’s a scripted reality show.”

            “A scripted reality show that’s redoing your house.”

            “Right. My house. So my way.”

            Cameron’s hands inadvertently curled into fists. His fingernails dug into her arm and she flinched, coming a little closer to him. He licked his lips and shifted slightly in the heat of the small closet. His workers were still moving outside, carrying the rest of the supplies needed to finish the kitchen. He knew he needed to get back and help them out, but he had to make Kirsten understand first.

            “The network pays me to do home reno shows,” he said. “They pay you to pretend that you like what we do. Understand?”

            She nodded.

            “Good. Now—”

            “But I’m not going to live in a place I hate. And I’m not moving.”

            “Goose—”

            He cut himself off when he looked at her. He was so tired of fighting. The constant back and forth was getting to him and, even when they got along, the tension was always there. Like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch. He licked his lips and took a step back. A hard thing to do in a closet.

            “Can you please just do this for me?” he asked.

            She made a face like she was thinking about it. Then said, “Nope.”

            She moved for the closet doors and he cut her off. His hand came down on her arm again as he stepped too close to her. She gave him a look, one eyebrow raised, and he let his grasp drop. His fingers skittered across the bare skin of her arm and for a long moment, neither of them moved.

            “Stretch,” he said. There was a warning in his voice, even though he was the one leaning in. Some of the fire had gone out of her eyes, but they were still wide, shining in the semi-darkness of the closet. He licked his lips and she closed the distance between them.

            Their lips touched briefly, just the ghost of a kiss, and then she pulled away. But he reacted too fast. His arms scooped around her, pulling her tight to him. His lips found her skin again, trailing kisses up the side of her neck. Her breath was cold against him, short breaths giving way to longer sighs.

            He cupped her chin in his hand and kissed her lips again. She reacted like she was coming out of a daydream and then wrapped her arms around his neck. He pushed her lips open as her fingers curled into his hair, pulling it out from his scalp.

            Cameron breathed heavily into her mouth, breaking the kiss. “Stretch,” he whispered.

            She was off of him in a second, unflappable. She pursed her lips tightly, looking up into his eyes. His heart was pounding in his chest, set off a thousand times faster by the look in her eyes, and he struggled for words.

            “Umm,” he said. He pulled his eyes off of her. “We have to tape something.”

            “Of course.”

            And she left the closet without another word.

            He heaved out a deep breath and settled back against the wall. A trickle of light from the hallway hit the toe of his shoe and he brought his foot back into the darkness. He was still breathing heavily, wondering how the hell he had let that happen. And, more concerning, how the hell he had let that happen with _her_.

***

            Cameron dropped his coffee when he walked into the kitchen the next morning. The marble countertops had been removed and leaned up against the wall. Kirsten was sitting on the floor in front of the white cabinets, staining them brown.

            She looked up on impact, but didn’t even wince. “Morning,” she said.

            “Morning?” he repeated. “What the hell did you do to my kitchen?”

            “My kitchen.”

            “Your kitchen,” he corrected. He was unable to find more words to follow that statement. Half of his pristine white cabinets were now a dark brown. A dark brown that didn’t match the perfect white crystal marble he had picked out. White crystal marble that was probably damaged from being taken down unprofessionally by a woman with no contracting experience.

            He turned to Linus, who was standing behind him with an identical expression of distress. “How much footage did we just lose?” Cameron asked.

            “All of the kitchen footage.”

            “All of the...” Cameron pulled at his hair. He looked back at Kirsten. She sat contentedly on the floor as she polished the cabinets. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. We can do this. Just... start filming.”

            Linus protested, but Cameron was already walking away. He sat down next to Kirsten on the floor and took the stain from her. He swirled the brush in the small can, wondering how much it would cost to buy enough stain for all the cabinets, and then looked back at Linus. Linus gave him a thumbs up.

            Cameron spouted out an impromptu speech about how to stain cabinets, brushing short, neat strokes against the wood. Kirsten watched in silence –a medical miracle in and of itself.

            When the rest of the crew got there, Linus wandered off to tape something else and Cameron sighed. He dropped the brush and the can, the metal clattering against the tile. He looked over at Kirsten, who watched him with casual disinterest, and he leaned towards her.

            She pecked him on the lips and let him rest their foreheads together.

            “You, little darling, are a tempest in a teapot.”

            “Sorry.”

            He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

            “No, I’m not.”

            He laughed weakly and grabbed the can of stain again. Swirling the brush, he smiled as she rested her head on his shoulder and he started to paint again.


End file.
